Tao

I don’t claim to know everything (or anything) about Taoism, but Wikipedia has a long passage about it.

Tao (or Dao) can mean way, road, channel, path, doctrine, or line. The Tao is a natural order that enables all things to exist and dominate every action, not so much through force as through a natural curvature of space and time. It is the origin and power of all creation – its essence is unknown, but it can be observed in its manifestation – this is behind the operation and change of nature. Livia Kohn describes the Tao as “the underlying cosmic power which creates the universe, supports culture and the state, saves the good and punishes the wicked. Literally ‘the way’, Tao refers to the way things develop naturally, the way nature moves along and living beings grow and decline in accordance with cosmic laws.” The Tao is ultimately indescribable and transcends all analysis and definition. Thus, the Tao Te Ching begins with: “The Tao that can be told is not eternal Tao.” Likewise, Louis Komjathy writes that the Tao has been described by Taoists as “dark” (xuan), “indistinct” (hu), “obscure” (huang), and “silent” (mo).

According to Komjathy, the Tao has four primary characteristics: “(1) Source of all existence; (2) Unnamable mystery; (3) All-pervading sacred presence; and (4) Universe as cosmological process.” As such, Taoist thought can be seen as monistic (the Tao is one reality), panenhenic (seeing nature as sacred), and panentheistic (the Tao is both the sacred world and what is beyond it, immanent and transcendent). Similarly, Wing-Tsit Chan describes the Tao as an “ontological ground” and as “the One, which is natural, spontaneous, eternal, nameless, and indescribable. It is at once the beginning of all things and the way in which all things pursue their course.” The Tao is thus an “organic order”, which is not a willful or self-conscious creator, but an infinite and boundless natural pattern.

Furthermore, the Tao is something that individuals can find immanent in themselves, as well as in natural and social patterns. Thus, the Tao is also the “innate nature” (xing) of all people, a nature which is seen by Taoists as being ultimately good. In a naturalistic sense, the Tao as visible pattern, “the Tao that can be told”, that is, the rhythmic processes and patterns of the natural world that can be observed and described. Thus, Kohn writes that Tao can be explained as twofold: the transcendent, ineffable, mysterious Tao and the natural, visible, and tangible Tao.

Are you getting the picture? When I saw the Bronze script for Tao, I was immediately struck by the resemblance to the Tree of Life in the Kabbalah. (I know, I know, I’m showing off how I make cosmic leaps of faith, but the point is that the middle ‘way’ is flanked by two outside pillars.) The triple top is open-ended, the shape in the middle is a prison cell (?) and the bottom tails off slightly to the left. After all Chinese writing is actually a pictogram.

This image is the modern form of Tao, but it seems to be missing some elements of the Bronze one. Just sayin’.

And just to show that I’m not the first one to make this connection, check this out: